Yahoo Might Buy Summly: Here’s What You Need to Know

The life of Nick D’Aloisio is about to change if the news about Yahoo wanting to buy his iPhone app becomes a reality. The seventeen year old  has developed an application that enables people to receive news in a summarized format. It is iPhone app is based on algorithm that is able to display the news in a few sentences thus making it beneficial for individuals who do not have time to read through news stories. So far the application has attracted a number of investors since its launch in December 2011, which have catapulted the application to greater heights.

The first investor into Summly was Li-Ka Shing, a billionaire from Hong Kong  who was impressed by the application’s ability to summarize a large variety of articles. His investment also got the attention of other high profile people such as Ashton Kutcher, a US actor and Wendi Murdoch among others. The investments have so far added up to over a million dollars, which makes it less surprising that Yahoo is interested in this app developed by a teenager in London.

According to news reports, the CEO OF Yahoo, Marrisa Meyer met with the teenager  a couple of weeks ago and is rumored to have expressed interest in making the application part of the purchases focusing on mobile phones that she has been making lately. Nevertheless, the interest of Yahoo in purchasing Summly might not be clear to many but seems to fit well with the objective of the CEO of Yahoo which is to give the company a turn around. The purchase of Summly by Yahoo will see the application introduce news content in a mobile format with a pleasing yet native interface. This type of application that summarizes news has been considered by many companies but the execution process has been the stumbling block. For Yahoo, Summly seems to do the hard work for them and their job is just to make sure it is executed well.

Summly has a number of features that Yahoo might find beneficial to their target market which includes the summarizing of the news into text form so that it can flow naturally. This is an upgrade from the original application where the news  which was summarized was viewed in bullet points. Another feature is the preloading of news summaries every time the application is opened so that  users do not have to download the most recent ones afresh, thus saving time. Furthermore, the articles can be accessed from different publications even when the phone is not connected to WiFi. The functionality and minimalist design of Summly is exceptional as the news is categorized in topic tiles that only needs the user to swipe  or even tap to use it effectively.

Currently, the Summly app is free but this may change with its purchase by Yahoo and also  the fact that D’Aloisio has been considering to the integration of a payment system which target users who may want to read the news stories in their full version.